[kmarc]

Someone mentioned on the reddit thread that after 200+ comments noone actually questioned if the story is true.

On HN, there is one comment, and it does question if it's true. GOOD!

I am curious if it's real or not. My bet is it's not. It's easy to screw up some downloading logic with overflows, one-off errors etc, but since WA is E2E encrypted, it would need a lot more "accident" in code to make this possible.

[mns]

But this is about backups and the fact that this guy bought a new phone and started a data restore for Whatsapp from GoogleDrive, what if something is wrong there, maybe the backups are not even encrypted, even though everyone thinks they are.

[MarcellusDrum]

WhatsApp does claim that Google Drive/iCloud backups are encrypted by default. [1]

> ... With end-to-end encrypted backup, you can also add that same layer of protection to your backup on iCloud or Google Drive.

[1]: https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/about-end-to-end-encr...

[bellyfullofbac]

My comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29838746

My first suspicion would be, "Define new". OP and you could be working on 2 different definitions of that word.